No Love Allowed
by Impure Paradise
Summary: For some reason, it seemed impossible to tell anyone that my favourite place was in his arms. (Butch/Bubbles. Two-Shot. A forbidden romance told from both point of views.)
1. Bubbles Utonium

**No Love Allowed**

**~ Hello! Well, this is my first mixed couple story. I've never once published a mixed couple story before (yet I seem to love all of the mixed couple pairings) so I decided that I should just do it. So, with that said, thank you for dropping by to read and I hope that you enjoy it! ~**

**Disclaimer - I do not own the Powerpuff girls or the characters used in this story. I also don't own the lyrics down there.**

**Summary - For some reason, it seemed impossible to tell anyone that my favourite place was in his arms. (Butch/Bubbles. Forbidden romance. Two-shot.)**

* * *

><p><em>You, you're everything I want,<em>  
><em>And I, I'm everything you need.<em>  
><em>This night is cutting into me.<em>  
><em>You tie me down, you watch me bleed.<em>  
><em>And we risk everything tonight.<em>

_I, I am the misery you crave,_  
><em>And you, you are my faithful enemy.<em>  
><em>This hunger seems to feed on me.<em>  
><em>A sacred sin, a dying breed,<em>  
><em>And we risk everything.<em>

_- Scarlet, In This Moment_

**XoXoXoXoXoXoXo**

(_"Find what you love and let it kill you." - Charles Bukowski_)

His ceiling was cracked beyond repair, ugly and broken, and it caused me to wonder why I spent so much time looking at it. There wasn't much else to look at in his bedroom, I suppose. The posters strapped to his walls were all far too controversial and his television never seemed to be on unless he was playing one of those silly racing games (he spent far too much time on that game machine, even now, even at eighteen years old, video games controlled his day). The ceiling seemed to calm me. It was plain and wobbly with bumps and the only part of his bedroom that was white and pure.

As my eyes - soft and hiding under heavy eyelids because I was so tired but sleep was eluding me - stared up at the ceiling above us, my subconscious went into over-drive with worry. There was a good chance that my sisters wouldn't find out that I wasn't in my own bed, where I should have been, as I had cleverly rigged up some pillows to fashion a body and a head, but that notion didn't stop me from worrying, didn't stop the anxiety and the trepidation from spreading through my veins and swirling around coldly in my bloodstream and _keeping me awake_. If I was lucky, they would simply poke their heads through my bedroom door to check that I was asleep and tucked away in dream-land before going off to bed themselves. If I was unlucky, however, they would uncover my trickery and try to find me. And they would find me. They were superheros after all; they never gave up, never gave up on _me_.

I spent a lot of time worrying about what might happen if my sisters ever found out where I was spending most of my nights, but he always told me not to think about it. And I tried, I tried so hard and so valiantly, I'd just soak in the warmth of his embrace and his presence and I'd forget about my sisters and I'd dream of an illusory world in which our relationship wouldn't be considered wrong. That dream was what kept bringing me back, because, one day, I hoped that it would come true, it would all be _real_.

The window was open, ever so slightly, as it caused hard shivers to rack my body from the coldness and the icy wind that was spiraling around us. I pulled the green bed sheets tighter around my gracile frame and I scooted closer to him, hoping that the warmth from his body heat might pass over to me and keep me snug and safe in our bed - it wasn't just his bed anymore, we needed to face it. I spent more time in his bed than in my own. As our bare skin touched, side by side, I felt his arm lift and it was wrapping around me, and I welcomed the embrace, sinking in, melting against his touch, laying my head between the crook of his shoulder and the curve of his neck. He was so warm that I couldn't pause the sigh of contentment seeping from my lips, exhaling softly against his chest.

It had been like this for months. We would sneak around behind everyone's backs, we would meet up late in the moonlight when no one could see, we would keep our relationship to only ourselves because it had to be that way. We could only forever be a secret. And while I was dealing with that, while I accepted it, it still upset me to the point where I just..wanted to _scream_..cry, wail, hit things, because I wanted the future that we knew we could never have. I wanted to be his future, but alas, there was no hope for a relationship that was as doomed as ours. Still, I couldn't give it up either, couldn't let it go. He made me feel things that I never thought possible, things that I had never felt with anyone else before, not once in my eighteen years of existence.

I needed him to stay with me; to be _mine_; to _love_ me until there was _nothing left_ to love.

But we were still doomed.

After all, no one would understand why I felt so deeply for a Rowdyruff boy. No one could ever understand that I fell in love with _him_.

As I snuggled deeper into his arm, nuzzled into his shoulder, I lay a small, chaste kiss against his neck, whispered into his hot skin. "I wish that I could stay here forever."

He didn't speak, didn't respond, but I knew that he was awake; I could feel his fingertips grazing my collar-bone, leaving with them a lingering want in their trail. I waited for an alarmingly long moment, hoping to hear his voice - so deep and flawless - tell me of all the things that I wanted to hear, but I was left waiting for a disconcertingly long time, and he was still silent even after I felt his heartbeat thump twelve times.

Elevating my head, I searched for his scintillating green eyes, and when they connected with mine, the corner of his lip twitched into an almost smile. Almost.

"Don't you wish that we could stay here forever?" I asked him while placing my hand lower against his chest, gripping at his dark moss T-shirt, feeling the pattern of his muscles under the fabric against my splayed fingers.

"Of course I do." His reply was enthusiastic; as enthusiastic as he could possibly get; but there was a theatricality behind it that I could not ignore. While his voice sounded somewhat genuine, the expression didn't quite reach his eyes, and it made my stomach _ache_ because I needed him to say it back or I'd be running up the walls with insanity. I couldn't comprehend why he acted like this. He was once so sweet, so sincere and attentive, and then he wasn't. It was getting hard to tell which side controlled him more; the Rowdyruff or my boyfriend.

I would have never imagined myself falling for someone as wrong and as faulted as him - _never never never_ - but when he looked at me, when he smiled at me, I felt as though I couldn't bare to be apart from it all, from the security and the notion that someone like him could feel something pure for someone like me. It was always that way when he looked at me. He had such alluring, arresting eyes. The kind of eyes that you could just get lost in. And I guess I did.

"Do you really?" I asked in an undertone, nothing short of a whisper, terrified of what his answer might be. At my question, he raised an eyebrow, his pursed lips not moving an inch, and I forced myself to leave his eyes and stare down at his chest, watching my hand as it played with the material of his shirt. "If you had the choice," I swallowed down the hesitance in my throat, willing myself to continue while I still had the bravery to do so. "Would you really want to be with me forever?"

(Forever was an awfully long time)

I met his eyes once more, and his ever-so-handsome face was blank, devoid of all emotion. I wanted to reach out, to stroke the skin of his cheek and bring back that look of affection that he had once held for me. It was so much different, back in the beginning, back before our relationship became routine. He was romantic, devoted, wonderful; our relationship was so euphoric that it took me to another world. And as the months went on, he didn't look at me the same way anymore. I wanted to know why - what was wrong with me? - but I was always too afraid to ask.

"You know that I would," He said in a tone much warmer than before, holding more sentiment - so sweet and kind that I wasn't sure if he was lying or not and I didn't care. His face closed in on me, his forehead resting against mine, and he touched the corner of my lip with his cold fingertips. "You're my girlfriend."

Barely.

I was _barely_ his girlfriend.

We could never go to the cinema together without fear of being caught by someone. We could never visit restaurants and go on normal dates with waiters and jugs of iced water. We could never be together forever without complications holding us back and tearing us apart. I would never really be his girlfriend (or anything more). All that we could ever do was be together in the privacy and security of his bedroom.

It wasn't fair.

I could never tell my sisters all about how elated I was. He could never tell his brothers that I was his.

I wanted so desperately to just come clean about everything, to tell my sisters that I was in love with our enemy, that I was _happy_. But for some reason, it seemed impossible to tell anyone that my favourite place was in his arms.

Shifting my body so that I could be even closer to him, I leaned down and I left trails of soft, featherlight kisses along his neck and up to his jaw-line. As I pecked the corner of his lips, he was pulling me into his arms, deeper in his embrace, and he pressed his lips against mine, anchoring them together with something that I remembered to be passion. His arms, big and strong and beautiful, held onto my back tightly, as though he were afraid that I might leave, and I melted, clung onto his shirt, inhaled his scent of leather and rain like it was my only air supply and I needed it to live.

When I tore our kiss, pulled away for a breath, I brought my hand to his face, stroked his cheek as though he was the most precious thing to me (and he was.)

"I love you," I whispered out on an exhale of breath as I ran my fingers through his tough, spiky hair, so dark in colour and so soft that I reveled in the feeling of the strands sinking through my splayed fingers.

He didn't say it back.

Instead, he brought his mouth back to mine and captured me in another kiss so psychedelic that made my heart pitter patter against the cage of my chest and left my toes curling from the excitement of it all. It had been so long since he had kissed me like that. Too long to remember. I pressed a smile against his lips, my skin tingling with his touch, and I felt free and _wanted_. No one could understand how good that felt. No one could understand that I _needed_ it, like a drug, like a sedative, I needed it with every beat of my heart and I didn't want to_ lose_ it. Didn't want to lose him -_not ever_- and even though he wasn't perfect, even if he didn't tell me all the things that I wanted to hear, I still craved him every single day.

(He was _mine_ and I was _his_.)

Wrapping my frail arms around his neck, I pecked the scruff of his chin and all the way down to his collar-bone. I felt his hand take rest on my shoulder and I instinctively dragged my own towards it, gripping his palm and interlacing my fingers through his and pressing my fingertips into the back of his hand and compressing (because he wasn't letting go, _no, no, no_)

With each kiss delivered, I mumbled sweet nothings into his skin.

_I need you._

_I want you._

_I love you._

_I really, really love you._

I never expected him to say it back. I was always left guessing, but deep down, I knew that even if he did love me, he would never dare say the words. And knowing that hurt so badly. I sometimes wished - no matter how horrible it was - that I could hurt him in the same way that he was hurting me, but I knew that even if I had the chance, if I was given the opportunity to make him feel what I felt, I wouldn't do it.

Because I still_ loved_ him.

I _adored_ him.

As our lips parted for the second time, his eyes were on mine, so deep that I was swimming in his pools of green, and I clung to his neck, searching desperately for a sign of affection in his gaze. I couldn't find what I was looking for. Never could. He pressed his lips to my forehead, kissing me sweetly, twice, so softly and warmly that I melted against him, and then he was off, lowering me back into a lying position on my side of _our_ bed, and his arms were gone and I was left frowning at the loss of contact (I would have risked life and limb to have them back around me).

His eyelids shut almost instantly and I watched as his breathing slowed and slowed until his exhales began to sound more conspicuous against the air. I lay at his left side, my palm finding its way back to his sinewy chest, and I played with the material of his shirt while he breathed. As he slowly drifted off to dream-land (a land of which had been eluding me all night) I just stared, stared at his beautiful face and lips and cheeks and _everything_.

For the next ten minutes, I lay there, unable to drift off myself, and I wondered if he would ever just tell me that he loved me back.

And the funny thing was, he _never_ did.

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><p><strong>~ There we have it, my first mixed couple story. Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed it! ~<strong>

**Review please?**


	2. Butch Jojo

**No Love Allowed**

**~ Hello! Here is the second part which will be told in Butch's point of view as opposed to Bubbles'. Thank you for dropping by to read, and I hope that you enjoy it! ~**

**Summary - For some reason, it seemed impossible to tell anyone that my favourite place was in his arms. (Butch/Bubbles. Forbidden romance. Two-shot.)**

**Disclaimer - I do not own the Powerpuff Girls, the characters used in this story, or the song lyrics down there.**

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><p><em>Wake up and look me in the eyes again.<em>  
><em>I need to feel your hand upon my face.<em>  
><em>Words can be like knives,<em>  
><em>They can cut you open,<em>  
><em>And then the silence surrounds you,<em>  
><em>And haunts you.<em>

_I think I might've inhaled you._  
><em>I can feel you behind my eyes.<em>  
><em>You've gotten into my bloodstream.<em>  
><em>I can feel you flowing in me.<em>

_- Stateless, Bloodstream_

**XoXoXoXoXoXoXo**

I hadn't noticed that there was a small spot of my wall that I had missed when I painted it, not until then, when my breathing was slow and my eyelids were heavy but I couldn't sleep no matter how hard I tried to. I usually had no problem getting to sleep, especially when she was here with me, but this day was different, because my subconscious was nagging at me with the anxiety that I never usually felt. I was trapped in the thought, the wonder, wondering what my brothers would say if they knew who I slept beside almost every single night. I betrayed their trust just so that I could be with an enemy in a way that neither of them could possibly begin to understand. And I knew, knew that they would _never_ forgive me if they ever happened to find out. I was supposed to lie and to cheat, it's what I was born to do, but not to _them_. Never to them.

Even with the risk always at hand, I still spent most of my nights with her. Some nights, she wouldn't show because she would be with her friends - Robin? Mitch? - and I wouldn't be able to sleep. I was so used to her being near me, I had become so accustomed to it, that when she wasn't, I felt like I just..couldn't _breathe_. I didn't understand that feeling. _Needing_ someone. She was never supposed to mean _anything_ to me. We were always supposed to be forever a secret, a fire that would burn out and die in a matter of time. But she clawed her way into me. She got under my skin and there was no getting her out.

My body was heating up by the second, burning my skin and perspiring on my forehead. It was too hot to think straight - it was her fault, she insisted that I start closing the window before we go to sleep because my room was too cold. _Our_ room. It felt like our room, so I said yes and I closed the window even though I always ended up freakishly hot when I tried to sleep. With one swift movement, I tore the green bed sheets away from my body and I slowly placed them around her. I had thought that she had long been asleep, due to her heavy breathing, but apparently not, as the second that I moved to cover her up, she turned her sylphlike body around so that she was facing me, closer to me than she had been before.

She was so deadly silent, but her eyes were open, blinking blue against the darkness. These nights were becoming meaningless. She barely spoke to me. She just held my face and looked at me with such affection and desire, but she never said anything. It was as though she wasn't in there anymore. She rarely told me that she loved me, but she always made sure to show it, by just holding me and being with me instead of running away from this disaster of a relationship that we were clinging onto for dear life.

I was surprised that she was risking so much just to be with me, especially when she easily could have gotten anyone she wanted (she was _beyond_ beautiful. I had long stopped telling her that though). There were times when I considered just letting her go, so that we could both stop lying to our families and our friends and just get back to our lives outside of the darkness and hollowness of my bedroom.

But I never did.

She was everything that I was supposed to _hate_. She was the epitome of goodness and compassion. I shouldn't have felt anything other than hatred and disdain towards her, but even with her being who she was, _a hero_, she still meant something to me. She still made me feel special, cherished, wanted. She still loved me with every beat of her heart. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't let her leave, even if I wanted to, because even with the risk of being found out, I couldn't spend a night without knowing that she was there, loving and caring about someone as damaged as me. Someone as messed up as I was.

That's what our relationship was.

Messed up.

If the truth ever did come out, my brothers would never be able to understand why I needed a Powerpuff girl. No one would ever be able to comprehend why I wanted _her_.

"I thought you were sleeping," I spoke into the muteness, diverting my face so that I could look directly at her, and I waited, waited for her to say _something_, but she was absolutely silent. She glanced at my eyes, darted from one of them to the other, and her lips twitched into something of a smile. But she didn't speak. She never did.

As I turned to lay on my side, I searched for her hand under our bed sheets and took it in mine. Her eyes were downcast in seconds, staring down at our intertwined fingers and her almost-smile transformed further, into a _real_ smile, the kind that she used to give, back when I would surprise her. I rarely saw it now. Rare was an understatement. Our eyes were on each other's, and I was so lost in her blue irises that I thought I may never escape, and I could feel my stomach sinking -_twisting_- under the marred skin. She was too beautiful. Her eyes, her smile, her face. Everything about her was (her voice was the most beautiful, and now it was gone.)

I remembered how it was in the beginning. We had both been so young and so confused. We didn't know why we were so attracted to one another, why we always found ourselves staring during the heat of battle, why she'd spend more time yelling at me rather than my brother and vise versa. We didn't want to feel that way. It was so many shades of _wrong_. But we hadn't been able to hold ourselves back from each other. And over time, the heat and the tenderness was gone, dead, buried, but we couldn't stop holding each other. Neither of us wanted to lose what we had. Our relationship had become the biggest part of both of our lives. It was too vital to give up.

"Do we have plans for tomorrow?" I asked her, trying to sound as casual possible, trying to hide the desperation and the begging of my tone, eager to pull her into a real conversation for the first time in two whole weeks.

She tilted her head into her pillow, batting her vivacious blue eyes into mine, and spoke.

She _spoke_.

"Same as usual," She mumbled in return. Her voice was quiet and _so so so_ familiar that my chest ached at the sound of it. She offered me a small, weak smile and she carried on. "All we ever do is sleep beside one another in this room. And that's all we will ever do."

My lips were twitching at a frown, and I wondered just what was going through her mind. No more than one month ago, she was telling me of how she wished that she could be with me forever -like a _wife_- and that she dreamed of a world where we wouldn't have to hide any longer, where we could truly be together. Now, she just treated our relationship like a disease. Doomed to fail. All because I couldn't tell her the words that she wanted to hear. And I still couldn't.

"Don't you want..more?" I stared down at her blonde hair and her blinking blue eyes, my question lingering in the air between us, and she appeared to be contemplating a response.

It was a redundant question. I knew that she had always wanted more, but lately, she wasn't acting like she did (and I couldn't blame her). She had changed from how she was in the beginning. She was once optimistic, she was passionate, she was effervescent, she was happy. And as the weeks dragged on, dragged on to months, she had completely stopped trying. She didn't love me so good anymore.

After pulling herself into a half-sitting position on the bed, she brought her cold hands to my face and caressed my cheek, indenting small finger-shaped marks into my skin - just like she used to. She pressed her lips onto my forehead and kissed me so delicately that I barely even felt it happen, and then she was pulling back, staring directly into my eyes, holding my face with both hands, and she nodded, wearing a small, insignificant smile on her face.

"Of course I want more," She stroked my lips with her thumb, before running her hands through my hair, at the back of my cranium, and it was almost as if this side of had never left; the side that treated me as though I was the most precious thing in her world. "But we can never have forever. We knew that from the start."

I swallowed down the dryness in my throat, trying to remember what breathing was. She was right. I did know that. But back then, I didn't care. It was only when she started to pull back, when I felt like I was so close to actually losing her after months of _fighting_ to keep what we had, and_ struggling_ to settle, that I started to care about her. I was never supposed to care for her, but I did, so deeply that I couldn't even put it into words because I didn't understand it.

Just as I was about to pry my lips apart, say something more - too excited that she was bothering to talk to me tonight, rather than just lay at my side in silence - she laced her fingers into my hair and brought my face closer to hers, and I closed my eyes as she kissed me with so much passion and devotion that it made my stomach physically _hurt_. In seconds, her lithe arms were around my neck, tugging me down with them, trying to be closer to me. My skin was burning as she left kisses along my collar-bone, across my jaw and back down to my shoulders. And as she hugged me tighter against her body, her nails clawing at my back, leaving marks on my bare skin, kissing my neck so faintly, I felt myself rack with shivers at the intensity of it all.

She was so passionate. So romantic. So zealous.

And I wasn't. Not anymore.

She deserved more than me. Much more. But I wouldn't ever let her go.

(She was _mine_ and I was _hers_.)

I could have sworn that I heard her whisper, "I love you.", but I was in too much of a daze to be sure. She made my head spin. Made my eyelids melt beneath their lids. My skin was on fire with each second of her lips brushing against mine and I couldn't _breathe_, couldn't even try. I had no idea how she always managed to make me feel so powerless whenever she was near. With one final peck on my cheek, she pulled her head back and she sat up straighter, removing her arms from my chest. I watched her, blinking my eyes to bring back my sight, and I felt her hand on my face again (and I was in Heaven).

She stroked my cheek, softly and faintly, before smiling at me. Her smile was so arresting. But I rarely saw it anymore."I love you," She whispered - and this time I knew that she had said it, but she didn't say it like she used to. She said it like she had given up.

My heart kicked violently at her words.

(She loved me.)

(I was too afraid to love anything.)

Pulling the black sheets around her legs, she tore her hand away from my face and moved back to her side of _our_ bed. "Good night."

With that said, she lay down and her blue eyes snapped shut, and I was left wondering if that was the last time that she would talk to me (for a while, at least). When I lay down beside her, she didn't cozy up to me like she always used to, but I still felt her take my hand and rub small circles into the base of my palm, and I welcomed it. Welcomed the normality.

As she fell asleep at my side, I wondered if she would ever just stop loving me one day.

And the funny thing was, she _never_ did.

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><p><strong>~ That's the end of my ButchBubbles two-shot. Thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed it! ~**

**Review please?**


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